Each week, GAP will be introducing their leadership team in a collection of blogs! This week we introduce our fearless leader: Matt Simpson!
Matt grew up on a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was home schooled in K-12 and spent most of the time working on a farm, which developed a love for the outdoors. Upon graduating high school in 2006, he went to work as a facilitator on a ropes course in Hagerstown, MD, and has been in the outdoor recreation field ever since. Along with a passion for the outdoors, from an early age, God placed on his heart a call to ministry along with finding new and innovative ways to communicate the gospel to an increasingly disillusioned generation.
Matt graduated from Liberty University in 2013, with a B.A. in Speech Communications and a minor in Biblical Studies. Upon graduation, he moved to Giles County with his family, and soon after began working at Mountain Lake Lodge in Pembroke, Virginia, where he was promoted to the position of Recreation Director in the beginning of 2015.
Matt began attending Northstar in late 2013, and was immediately captivated by the friendliness, joy, and biblical community and teaching. He became a member in 2014, and started to get involved in the GAP ministry. God placed on his heart a love for Northstar and what He was doing through the GAP ministry, so when Viktor Orekhov departed in 2015, Matt took over as the GAP Coordinator.
In his free time, Matt enjoys being outside, working out, playing music, pretending to play sports, working on cars, drinking coffee, reading, and hanging out with his girlfriend, Emily. His dream is to one day live out in the sticks, and use the outdoors as a ministry tool to connect people with God’s creation.
One of his favorite passages of Scripture comes from 1 Peter 2:9-10 –“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
